Evaluation of Digital Service Tax Application and Revenues in Türkiye and Selected Countries
Chapter from the book:
Yücel,
R.
&
Ayyıldız,
Y.
&
Er,
H.
(eds.)
2023.
Innovations that Digitalization Brings to the Finance Sector.
Synopsis
Current international taxation rules in today's economies are inadequate for taxing multinational companies that provide digital services. This situation is important in terms of tax losses of countries as well as taxation fairness and regulation of competition conditions. For this reason, in the last few years, many countries have had to face adding the Digital Services Tax (DST) to their agenda and tax legislation. This study aims to identify the developments in the world regarding the taxation of digital services, to evaluate the DST country practices and proposals, and to determine the contribution of this new tax to the treasury. In this context, the study examines the examples of countries implementing the DST, reveals the differences in implementation, and calculates the contribution of the DST to tax revenues. As a result of the study, it has been determined that there are differences in terms of tax rate, tax subject and scope, and tax threshold due to the political-economic structure of the countries, the average rate of the tax is 3.8% in 14 countries where the DST has been put into effect, and the tax makes contribution of 0.1% and %0.26 max. on average to total tax collection in the countries examined. The best solution to the tax problems in this area is to establish international taxation rules within the OECD rather than national efforts.